Matt Spurlock

Music person and what not. Turn the page on the day, walk away. 'cos there's sense in what I say.

[Adam Kinzinger (Slava Ukraini) 🇺🇸🇺🇦 @AdamKinzinger]

Oh my lord. Come on guys

[JodiJacobson 🇺🇦 🩸🦷 @jljacobson]

.@SenWhitehouse is shamefully and openly corrupt.

How can he be chair of Judiciary? This is a disgrace.

[pokey pup @Whatapityonyou]

It’s SO WEIRD how he keeps doing this. Anyway, let’s make sure he gets some more government contracts I’m sure it’s fine.

[60 Minutes @60Minutes]

60 Minutes asks President Trump about his family’s crypto company, World Liberty Financial. https://t.co/tN4vYUVl83

[Zohran Kwame Mamdani @ZohranKMamdani]

It's morning again in America.

[The Daily Show @TheDailyShow]

Anthony Constantino’s first priority as the representative-elect for NY-21? #FreeDiddy

[DESERT HEARTS @DesertHearts]

Had to put this set out on YouTube ❤️‍🔥 Live @ Haunted Hearts 2026 is out now! https://t.co/UwgPm0SyHA

[么 ꜱ ᴀ ᴍ ꪜ, @___TheGOOdWitch]

I will never understand women who are pro life…

conservative white women are so fvcking brainwashed

[nappy the plug @nappytheplug]

Instagram Facebook meta make tens of billions annual on ads and their business manager is one of the worst online experiences you will ever have

kinda remarkable 😭

[Peter Schiff @PeterSchiff]

The Sept. U.S. trade deficit in goods was $134.9 billion, the highest ever recorded in Sept. There were only three months in history when the deficit was higher, all under Trump in 2025.

Here are the facts. Measured by the size of our trade deficits, Trump has been the worst president in history on trade. The tariffs have been a complete failure. Not only have they failed to bring manufacturing back to the U.S., but the U.S. is now more dependent than ever on foreign producers. Not only are we importing more than ever, but we are now paying Trump's tariffs on those imports.

Trump says trade deficits represent a loss. Judged by his own standard, Trump is the biggest loser in the history of the presidency. Also, if the economy is booming as Republicans claim, why have our trade deficits gone way up? Why are the trade deficits under Trump so much larger than they were under Biden, when, according to Trump, we had the worst economy in U.S. history?

Here are the facts. When you compare Trump's first two years to Biden's last two, GDP growth and job creation are slower, inflation is higher, and budget and trade deficits are bigger. If Trump is right that under Biden we had the worst economy in history, and the Trump economy is objectively worse on all counts, then the Trump economy is now the worst economy in history.

[Isaac Saul @Ike_Saul]

Nancy Pelosi, who is regularly hammered for her perceived insider trading, has made 213 total trades since 2014. Trump exceeded that number in a single day, which just happened to precede his own tariffs announcement. My latest on the mind boggling self-enrichment:

[Amy McGrath @AmyMcGrathKY]

Whoa. The U.S. added 90% fewer jobs in 2025 than originally reported.

That’s not a rounding error. That’s a massive difference between the economy Americans were told we had and the one we actually had.

[Congressman Robert Garcia @RepRobertGarcia]

ICE agents brutally attacked and broke the arm of a North Long Beach resident and U.S. citizen. The videos are horrific and should concern not just our community but the country.

I’m proud of the neighbors who documented and stood up for the family being terrorized by ICE. Donald Trump and his inhumane and illegal deportation machine must be stopped. Long Beach stands with our community and our immigrant families. ICE is not welcome in Long Beach. Abolish ICE.

[The Washington Post @washingtonpost]

The White House task force that President Trump charged with uncovering evidence of election fraud hasn’t produced any.

Instead, it's shifted to releasing records that his administration is using to build a case against those who investigated him. https://t.co/ymb0BNMX6b

[The Tennessee Holler @TheTNHoller]

🔥 “Answer the question, Tommy — I think you’re the one who needs to read the constitution, not me.”

@AbdulElSayed skillfully handles a bigoted Islamophobic heckler and exposes him as the true religious zealot in the room.

[Marco Foster @MarcoFoster_]

Alex Gibney: “A lot of these deaths related to Full Self Driving or Autopilot, 67 so far. If that had happened at GM over a brake malfunction, it would be massive congressional hearings. A lot of those things were settled so the actual facts of the matter wouldn’t come to light. In the film, we have the case of one which is a pedestrian who was killed by a runaway Tesla with malfunctioning Autopilot. They took that to trial and won a rather massive judgement and the evidence is overwhelming not only how bad the system was, but also how hard Tesla tried to hide the evidence of malfeasance. In a lot of cases, Autopilot has a function where milliseconds before the car slams into a wall, Autopilot will turn off, and so Tesla can say with a straight face Autopilot was not engaged at the time of the crash”

[Not So Disappointed Donna @dddonnnaaa]

Let’s see if the russian musk bots are back online.

I just watched the Musk Movie. It was 4 hours long. (@alexgibneyfilm) TY for putting in an intermission.) There was so much information. Its genre is documentary, but it could easily be put under horror also. It was a very good movie, but also psychologically terrifying.

I have to say the first hour of the movie, brought back memories of the old Elon. The one that my husband and I really liked. He was quirky, funny, smart, the first spacex successful launches were awesome, when Tesla was new, and everyone was excited about the electric cars, him working with Obama and him saying that AI was an existential risk. It was like he truly cared about the human race.

But then, he flips and turns into a villain. 😩 The last 3 hours he morphs into a psychotic megalomaniac. It was like an evil storm. The Tesla auto pilot starts crashing cars, killing people and then he lies about it & says how safe it is. He lost his shit during Covid with the lockdowns. His son transitioned into Vivian, and he said the woke mind virus needed to be destroyed. He went from AI being an existential threat & said it was summoning demons, to wanting to put an AI robot in every home. The government was regulating his businesses due to environmental concerns and he does not like being told what he can and cannot do.

I really believe part of the reason he went after our govt, to control it, was because of regulations they were putting on him and his companies. He realized to remove these regulations he needed to control politics. This is why our govt should not be able to be bought by the richest man in the world. The Ashley St. Clair part of the story is crazy! I’m glad she is exposing all these details. It was brave of her to tell her story. She could have easily signed the NDA and been rich, she decided to do the right thing. We need more people like this.

The doge part of the movie is devastating. Gutting really important humanitarian efforts, so many people, including children, around the world have died because of this. Halting scientific research projects, such as cancer research, that some have been working on for years. The purge of a lot of brightest and best from our govt departments, leaving dept frozen. Putting all our personal info in the hands of young kids who had idea what they were doing, who knows what will happen in the future now that all of info has been exposed. Cutting back at the EPA, surely helped his companies, but at what cost to our environment?

Watching the first quarter, he really could have been an amazing part of America’s history, but then he threw it all away and chose to be a villain. Why risk the future well being of America, especially when you have so many children? He says children are the future, yet the administration HE installed is dangerous and threatens our future. It makes no sense.

It’s like he has lost all empathy for others. Maybe he’s high all the time, which means we have a drugged up psychopath, who doesn’t care about anything but his own personal endeavors, no matter the consequences, and that same person is in charge of our government. What could go wrong? We left the movie scared about the future of the whole world.

[The Washington Post @washingtonpost]

Exclusive: A list reveals all the major donors to President Trump’s White House ballroom, including previously undisclosed contributors who have benefited from regulatory decisions, government contracts and, in one case, a pardon for a family member. https://t.co/y3ivMy1NKk

[Everett Stern @EverettStern1]

Dear Secretary Bessent @SecScottBessent,

My name is Everett Stern. In 2010 I was a compliance officer at @HSBC. From a back office in New Castle, Delaware, I watched billions of dollars move to drug cartels, sanctioned regimes, and terrorist organizations. The enemies of the United States. I documented it, I escalated it, and when the bank would not act, I took it to the @FBI, the @CIA, and eventually the @SECGov.

The result was a $1.92 billion settlement. At the time, it was one of the largest in American history. It was also about five weeks of the bank’s profit. Not one banker was charged. Not one went to prison.

I paid a different price. I lost my career, my savings, and my place in the industry I had trained for. I was blacklisted. Every door in American finance closed at once. I slept on a camping cot in a 300 square foot apartment because I could not afford a bed, and I waited tables at @PFChangs to eat. I tell you this not for sympathy, but so you understand that I know exactly what it costs to do the right thing in American finance, and exactly how little the system does in return.

I made that sacrifice because I believed it would change something.

Yesterday, your department fined @BankofAmerica $1.2 billion for failing to report more than $5 billion in suspicious transactions, some of it tied by your own findings to Chinese laundering networks, narcotics, and the southwest border, alongside 475 apparent sanctions violations touching Russia, Iran, and global terrorism. The bank admitted it willfully violated the Bank Secrecy Act.

Fourteen years after HSBC. A bank with “America” in its name. And once again, not one individual charged.

Secretary Bessent, I want to say plainly what I believe you already know. The fines are not working.

A fine is paid by shareholders, absorbed by the balance sheet, and forgotten by the next earnings call. Bank of America reported earnings this morning. Nobody who set the alert thresholds, nobody who decided the 2024 cease and desist could wait, nobody who chose the backlog over the law will lose a single thing they value. Their lives are untouched. That is the entire reason the behavior repeats.

This is money laundering. This is blood money. Money that reaches a cartel buys fentanyl that kills Americans. Money that reaches a terrorist organization buys the next attack. This country has fought a war on drugs and a war on terror for decades, at enormous cost in lives and treasure, and all the while we have allowed the financing to flow through institutions we charter and regulate. Cut off the money and we win. We have never seriously tried.

There is also a question of equal justice that I cannot let go.

Before I walked into the FBI building to report HSBC, I stopped in front of the Great Seal on the wall and read the words engraved beneath it: “Justice is the defense of our liberty.” I believed that. I still want to. But every day in this country, people go to prison for crimes that are nothing next to moving money for the people who want Americans dead. A suit, a title, and a corporate badge should not be a shield from the consequences that apply to everyone else. If a street dealer goes to prison for what he sells, the banker who moved the cartel’s money should be standing next to him.

I also want to raise something that is rarely said in these conversations. Why has no one inside Bank of America come forward the way I did? The answer is that everyone in American banking knows what happened to me, and to the whistleblowers who came after. The last person who spoke up is the only policy anyone believes. That is a culture problem, and it starts with leadership, in the banks and in the agencies that regulate them.

This is not a political issue. It has spanned administrations of both parties. It is a national security issue, and I am asking you to treat it as one.

Three things would change the math overnight.

Refer individuals for criminal prosecution. Not the analyst in the queue. The executives who set the thresholds and chose the risk. One banker in handcuffs would do more than every fine in Treasury’s history combined.

End “too big to jail.” An institution cannot be too big to fail and too big to jail at the same time. If it is the first, it must be held to a higher standard, not a lower one.

And if Bank of America will not act as America’s bank, review its charter. A national charter is a privilege granted on behalf of the American people. It should be conditioned on not moving money for the people trying to kill them.

Secretary Bessent, you said yesterday that these actions send a clear message that even the biggest institutions are not above the law. With respect, the institution was never the problem. The people inside it are above the law, and they know it. Until that changes, I will keep writing letters like this one, and the next bank will keep paying the next fine.

I gave up everything I had to stop this. I am asking you to use the power you have to finish it.

Respectfully,

Everett A. Stern
HSBC Whistleblower
Founder and Intelligence Director, Tactical Rabbit

[Matt Spurlock @Spurloco]

Its almost like its bad news...

[POLITICO @politico]

Administration delays release of IRS data showing impact of GOP tax cuts https://t.co/WTnLVzdEVb